God's Country

Nice, normal, well-meaning people living nice, normal, well-meaning lives, inescapably affected by cultural and economic expectations. A portrait of what it was like to live in a certain place at a certain time. And a reminder that all people are more complex than "the movies" and most of us usually assume them to be.

I was struck by how well-spoken the interviewees were, unlike the same people today. Truly an indictment of declining American education. Malle is a talented interviewer: appears non-judgmental, presses w/tough questions, but lets people talk. I really felt a change in the town post-Reagan. Yet generations learned nothing about TV stars who over-promise---county kept voting overwhelmingly Republican through 2016. Fav scenes: farming family; woman talking about giving up her baby; cow-inseminator

The wedding scene alone is worth the price of admission, and the 1985 snapshot at the end, with the turn towards poverty, depression, greed and even anti-Semitism, clearly reveals the effects of national and global trends that really got going in the interim.

With every film of his I see, I love Louis Malle more. In this, he does all the interviewing, and it appears that he could truly talk to anyone, openly and without judgment. And he elicits some, for the time and place, fascinating stories and some startling admissions. I found the whole movie touching, but especially the 1985 segment at the end, where folks, screwed by Reagan-era economic policies, managed to retain an optimism that turned out to be entirely unwarranted.

it's interesting comparing this to morris's 'vernon, florida'. this one is far kinder to its subjects, although that's probably because these people seem much more normal. it's also much less interesting than that movie, and also malle's other documentaries, because these very normal people are quite boring to watch, especially when we only get to know them at such a surface level. it's sort of sweet though.

A twisted mirror to Meet Me in St. Louis